Seven-six

Last Friday, when I came in from my morning surf session, I discovered that something had knocked a pretty big dent in the bottom of my surfboard. Bummer - but the odds were good that sooner or later it was going to happen, so I'm not going to get too worked up about it.

Whatever

The upside - it finally forced me to ride another board. I've been meaning to try a shorter board for a while now, so I rented myself a 7'6" funboard - four inches shorter than what I'm used to.

For those who don't surf, here's the lowdown on surfboard length. Longer boards are more stable, more buoyant, easier to paddle, and are capable of catching smaller waves. So why would anybody want to surf a shortboard? For the same reason commercial jumbo-jets aren't used as fighter planes - agility. A classic longboard pretty much wants to do one thing - travel in a straight line along the face of a peeling wave. With a shorter board, you trade away stability and ease for the ability to do quicker, sharper maneuvers.

I've been riding the new board for a few days now with pretty good success. It really does take a lot more work to paddle, but my stamina and fitness are good enough now that I can do it without much difficulty - which is not to say without soreness and tiredness the next day. It is surprisingly more maneuverable. Overall, it's a fun change and I'm happy to have achieved one of my technical goals for this trip, which was, in fact, to be competent on a 7'6".